The Frustrations of Loving John Watson at Five in the Morning
by KillerSockz
Summary: "A glimpse into one file in one folder in one drawer in one cabinet in one room in Sherlock's Mind Palace - a room reserved for paradoxes, futile pursuits, miscellaneous garbage, and John Watson." Sherlock/Watson.
1. Chapter 1

I have two needs. One is well written Sherlock/John fanfiction. The other is realistic Sherlock pov. It's too rare so I tried my hand at it. Enjoy the insanity, and when you're finished let me know you read.

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_Useless. Utterly __useless. To be without use. Without purpose. To not have a reason for existing. To not fulfill a desired outcome, or to not have an intended outcome to begin with. In other words a vain effort that will only end in futility. Completely and utterly __useless._

_Worse_ than useless though, it is a waste of time, a waste of space and a waste of thought. In the infinite reaches of the glory that my mind palace is, has been, and henceforth shall be, this one scrap of information – this conversation with myself – has no place. Certainly there is _room_ for it. In point of fact, the spot it occupies most frequently is a manila folder tucked away in the top drawer of the 27th filing cabinet of the room with the dreary wallpaper and no light source to speak of aside from that which streams in from the hallway. This room, located in the furthest point from the center, in the north east wing of the subbasement level was typically where I sorted things I found tiring. Paradoxes. Infinite loops. Other people's philosophical mash. Futile pursuits. Things that exist, are of no interest or use to me, that I simply cannot (for at least 4 justifiable reasons per sheet of information) delete. And of course, for John Watson.

But why should that space be wasted on something so _maddening_. So _unrelated_ to me. So completely _ridiculous_.

I sit atop the kitchenette table with my fingers interlaced and elbows propped atop my uncomfortable and knobby legs, which rest on the only chair in the flat that is indeed not covered in beakers or soiled lab coats or instruments or illicit substances or magazines or wires of a mysterious nature. Poised rigidly on this table I glare into the empty air before me. Instead of cabinets, a great structure of hallways and stairways and doorways and other-ways that the material world had yet to see gleams, every inch of every room holding memories, information, research, comparisons, references, theories, and every scrap of knowledge that I deemed important (or at the very least, interesting).

Every weekday at precisely 5:00am, I wake without need for alarms or bells. The streets of London - wonderful London - are always quiet at this hour, so that is when I take inventory of my mind.

Lately, my routine has contained another static step. Every weekday at precisely 5:01am, after settling down somewhere in the flat - a different place every day of the week - and beginning my run through the whole lot alphabetically, chronologically or relative to my fancy on the given morning, I have to sit there wasting time to delete the same damned piece of information. The same file. The same idea. Every morning I set flame to a torn, folded, weathered sheet of college ruled spiral notebook paper measuring to a very peculiar 13"x9" and detailing the only experience with emotion that had ever tormented me for longer than a full minute.

Into the palace I glared, eyes wide, frustration coming off me in waves. In torrents of rain and wind. A hurricane of chagrin.

This won't do.

None of this would do.

But what could I do?

As long as it has been the beginning of me, it has been the end of me - I'm being tortured by my own (_apparently_) inescapable humanity. Even as I sit here amid my experiments, _vastly_ intellectually superior to every person on this foggy mess of an island, my mind insists on constantly fixating itself on this one thought. This emotion. On this.

This.

How did this start.

Start.

Begin.

The beginning.

There's always a beginning. The first spark must have been when a man whose name I had long since deleted - a mutual friend of ours - said he would introduce me to someone I might be able to find a flat with.

I easily deduced every possible scenario. Based off the personality, history, faults, monetary wealth, race and orientation of the man in front of me there were several kinds of people with whom he would be acquainted. Of these hypothetical acquaintances, there was a small number that would actually be simultaneously hard-up to find housing in London, on good enough terms with the man to be a reputable housemate suggestion, and gullible or hated enough to be put in a room alone with someone as disagreeable as the man truly found me.

Despite that, in total there were over one-hundred thousand cases where the very specific type type of new person and I would fight and they would leave in the span of three minutes to three weeks.

The first three steps he took into my lab though, I knew he would fit into the under-fifty cases in which we get along. After the meeting was over, I filed him into the ten cases wherein we both enjoy at least some of the aspects of the company of the other, and _also _where he doesn't fantasize about leaving constantly.

By the end of our third meeting, I understood that there were only two scenarios left, and in both of them, I was in love with John Watson.

This was - and still is - troubling because I have taken an oath to remain loyal to intellectualism and the pursuit of knowledge, abandoning emotion for the fool's gold folly that it truly is. Even more so though... on occasion, the inevitability of my fall troubled me so because of the simple fact that John Watson was not gay.

I've known since the beginning. I was told mere minutes after I figured out it was inevitable that he would eventually be my first love, and naturally I was none too pleased. Of course, what I mean to say is that I was displeased about the reality that I would have to experience a first love, and not the reality that my love would never come to fruition. Another unnecessary experience, bedazzling the brain with chemicals and hormones, love is a chain reaction of emotion that dazzles the senses and dulls the mind.

If I were to work as usual, I couldn't afford to love, so I deleted it.

But it came back the very next morning, promptly at 5:00am.

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If you enjoyed it, thanks. I'd appreciate a nod. Sleep now. Work tomorrow. Love.


	2. Chapter 2

5:03am.

The movement of the clock startles me out of a pause. I quickly delete the file again, untangling myself from my hunched posture, and finally go about inventory.

Memories. Sixth level. One long continuous hallway, one room for every significant experience in my life, preserving them for later use (should such be required of me). Fifth level is top-secret. Information is the fourth level - I imagine it as a seemingly endless library where I had saved exactly and precisely every shred of knowledge I had torn out of books, television, experimentation, and study. The third and second level are combined, as a huge web of possibilities and theories They stand in the middle of the other levels because I use the levels above and below to mild the second and third. The first level is observation. A sitting room with an old-fashioned photo reel. The images stream past on the little screen at an incredible speed, but I see everything. I remember everything. I remember how many sun-spots formed on the faces of every neighbor on our block. I remember every train schedule, weekday, weekend, holiday, and state of emergency, in all European nations for the last 300 years. I remember every intricate and intimate detail of my flatmate, including but not limited to how many hairs are on his knuckles, what newspaper articles he The basement is for bad things. Indulgence. Drugs. Morally questionable interests.

For the thirty-thousandth time, I wonder what it must be like to be _normal_. So ignorant. So free. Probably something like an eternal high. Of course, if I should attain it I won't be able to appreciate it.

Laughable really.

Lastly, I check the sub-basement again, see no sign of the anomaly (though I feel the recently deleted file rewriting itself, violating my mind with its infuriating little existence) and set to waking John up with my fiddle. I like to share a cab and drop him off at the clinic in the mornings, and I can't do that if he wakes up at the time he'll have inevitably set his alarm to.

He stumbles into the main room (angry and teetering), yells at me, and gets to his morning routine for hygiene, tea, & griping.

I enjoy his griping in a non-romantic sense. I enjoy our friendship. More than I'd care to admit really. Emotions are (of course) for the weak, but if anything was to be learned from my scuffles with Moriarty, it was that I was a better man with Watson at my side.

The human is a social animal after all. While I am the rare exception in that I have absolutely no need for socialization, I do appreciate John's respect and reverence of my gifts. I need something to bounce ideas off of as well, and perhaps it may even be true that a part of me is being filled. Even a lone wolf in nature is only so unwillingly; every wolf has an internal longing to be part of a pack.

Also I like how he'll tidy when I'm out.

More than anything else though... more even than my intellect and curiosity (which were my only comforts in the days before my 5:00am problem) the friendship John and I shared _helped_ me. Moving through this numb-minded unappreciative populace was rather trying for me, and when I could I've avoided it, but there are many instances where there's simply no alternate option. I've always gotten to where I needed to go, one way or another, but with John it was easy. He could maneuver through the crowds like one of them. By no means was he _like_ them, try as he may to be so. To blend in. To find normal love. To have a normal life. John constantly strives for these things, but I know he'll never have them.

It's painful to watch, but I know there's a 99% chance he'll hate me (at least for a little while) if I tell him that he has all the tools for the life he wants, but he's too like me to take it. First he'll have to admit it to himself that he's addicted to danger, poor choices, high stakes, grand mysteries, and the notion of justice. Then I'll be able to tell him he'll never be happy.

After all, I'm not, and I am indisputably the master of _all_ these things.

What sets us apart though is that John is a good man, by modern definition. Instead of debating morality vs benefit and weighing the results against consequence in his head as I often must, John naturally knows what he thinks is the right decision. He may have trouble doing something like euthanizing an elderly man in pain, but at the very first instant that he sees the man he naturally knows that mercy is the route he wants to take. I would simply euthanize the man to make his complaining stop. What's more, John genuinely cares, and wants to help people, not just use them to understand them. I like doing things my way, but it's nice to have someone like John around to care for me.

Hard working, brave, brilliant, compassionate, and most importantly, curious - without curiosity, the human race is nothing. What is it that should drive us to new horizons if not for this attuned sense of emptiness waiting to be filled with knowledge - and yes, even talented. John is a good man, and a good friend. Someone I value more than myself sometimes, though I highly doubt John's life is worth more to the world in way of accomplishments and use than mine.

'Perhaps,' I muse to myself, 'I am a bad friend'. I reach a bony hand up to John, who is busying himself making tea in front of me. I tug at his shirt - an excuse to touch him. To feel the warmth on the fabric that clung to him. To be connected to him in a small way, "This thing makes you look like a buffoon,"

In the beginning of our relationship there were two possible outcomes. Both involved me falling in love with John. One ended with one of our deaths. Neither involve me telling him, but there's something about 'love' that I hadn't counted on back then.

This was that there happens to be very little choice involved on the obsessed man's part when something as vile as love has gripped his mind.

It's stronger than an urge, or a simple compulsion. There comes, with love, a physical need to...act.

_Delete me all you want it says, mocking me, __I'll just come back stronger._

John shrugs me off and makes a retort about me always looking like one.

I can't handle this much longer.

Deductions be damned, if anyone can win John Watson against all odds, it's Sherlock Holmes.


End file.
